Update

With Facebook progressively rolling out autoplay videos across the site, it can become quite distracting / annoying / (your own adjective here).

If you’re viewing the site in Google Chrome, you can take the following steps to disable this “feature”. It doesn’t require any plugins or extensions to be installed, this method uses the native in-built features of Google Chrome.

Step 1

Go to facebook.com

Step 2

Click on the little lock (or page if you’re not viewing the site in https) icon

Step 3

Click on the Plugins option and select “Always block on this site”

Step 4

Follow the grey prompt bar asking you to reload the page.

Step 5

Now when you scroll past a video it will attempt to load, fail and then just display the play button. Videos will now not automatically play.

How to play videos on Facebook when you choose.

Now that you’ve disabled videos on the site, what happens if you do want to watch a video? Well it’s pretty simple, click the play button for the video, it will then display the following grey box saying a plugin is missing.

Simply right click on the grey box and select “Run This Plug-in”. That’s it, your video will start playing momentarily.